Mr. Faraday's Reply to Dr. John Davy's Remarks. 339 



statement there given (482.)." In this and other parts of 

 what I have written (483. 484. *), which Dr. Davy quotes, he 

 thinks that I have been deficient in doing justice, or in stating 

 Sir Humphry Davy's " hypotheses" correctly. 



Dr. Davy for my word " general" substitutes " vagueness". 

 I used general in contradistinction to particular, and I fear 

 that vagueness cannot with propriety stand in the same rela- 

 tion. I am sure that if Sir Humphry Davy were alive, he 

 would approve of the word I have used ; for what is the case ? 

 Nearly thirty years ago he put forth a general view of electro- 

 chemical action, which, as a general view, has stood the test 

 to this day ; and I have had the high pleasure of seeing the 

 Royal Society approve and print in its Transactions of last 

 year, a laborious paper of mine in support and confirmation 

 of that view (1834. Part ii. page 448.f). But that it is not a 

 particular account is shown, not merely by the manner in 

 which Sir Humphry Davy wrote, but by the sense of his expres- 

 sions, for, as Dr. Davy says, " he attached to them no undue 

 importance, believing that our philosophical systems are very 

 imperfect, and confident that they must change more or less 

 with the advancement of knowledge^ ;" and what have I done 

 but helped with many others to advance what he began; to 

 support what he founded ? 



That I am not the only one, as Dr. Davy seems to think, 

 who cannot make out the precise (or, I would rather say, the 

 particular) meaning of Sir Humphry Davy in some parts of 

 his papers may be shown by a reference to Dr. Turner's ex- 

 cellent Elements of Chemistry, where, at page 167 of the fifth 

 edition, the author says: "The views of Davy, both in his 

 original essay and in his subsequent explanation (Philosophi- 

 cal Transactions 1826), were so generally and obscurely ex- 

 pressed that chemists have never fully agreed, as to some 

 points of the doctrine, about his real meaning. If he meant 

 that a particle of free oxygen or free chlorine is in a nega- 

 tively excited state, then his opinion is contrary to the fact, 

 that neither of these gases affect an electrometer," &c. &c. 

 Having similar feelings, I thought that I was doing Sir Hum- 

 phry Davy far more justice in considering his expressions as 

 general, and not particular, except where they were evidently 

 intended to be precise, as in the cases which I formerly quoted 

 (483. 484.).§ 



[* These paragraphs belong to the Fifth Series, noticed in Lond. and 

 Edinb. Phil. Mag., vol. iii. p. 460.— Edit.] 



[t See Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag., vol. vi. p. 181.— Edit.] 



% Phil. Trans. 1826, p. 390. Edinb. New Phil. Journ., Oct. 1835, p. 323. 



§ I may be allowed to quote in a note a passage from one of Mr. Pri- 

 dcaux's papers, of the date of March 1833; I was not aware of it when 



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